Discrimination and Social Justice Issues Today Essay

As healthcare legislation continues to be debated in the House and Senate, I would like to express my support for the continuation of one, significant policy that was instituted under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), namely the idea that young people under the age of 26 should be permitted to remain on their family's health insurance policies. The current generation of young people is graduating with more college debt than ever before and many new graduates are forced to take jobs that do not offer full benefits. The rise of freelance employment also means that many young persons may be forced to forgo jobs with health insurance.

Buying independent insurance is a significant cost, even though ensuring that young and healthy people are in the health insurance risk pool is necessary to keep overall healthcare costs low. Preventative early care can also reduce the need for more costly secondary are tertiary care for patients in the future. Thus, for both young people's own financial security and health as well as for society, maintaining this policy can and will continue to convey significant societal benefits.

Yours truly,

X

UNIT 5 DISCUSSION

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was one of the most significant US Supreme Court cases of the post-Reconstruction era. The case involved Plessy, who refused to occupy a railway car designated for people of color alone and instead sat in a car deemed to be for whites only.

The Supreme Court at the time held that it was constitutionally permissible to mandate racial segregation as long as the separate facilities were equivalent to one another. The Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision, however, overturned Plessy, first noting the logistical impossibility of creating facilities which were truly separate but equal. As noted by McBride (2006), the Warren Court found that separate facilities in and of themselves were unequal, given the implied discrimination in the division. Furthermore, in actual practice, regarding the specifics of the Brown case, the Court noted that the educational facilities designated for students of color were inevitably inferior to schools for whites. Finally, there was substantial psychological evidence that segregation generated self-hatred and emotional damage to African-American students.